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There has been a lot of discussion about the merging of native advertising and programmatic buying since the launch of the Facebook Exchange (FBX) two years ago. With the creation of FBX, demand-side platforms (DSP) built support for creative metadata, such as headlines, thumbnails and the other categories that make up native ads. This was version 1 of programmatic native.

Seeing the success of FBX, Web publishers began hypothesizing about how they could bring the same native RTB capabilities to their sites and applications outside of Facebook. With the IAB closing in on the ratification of OpenRTB 2.3, which will add native capabilities to the standard programmatic process, we are closer to version 2 then ever before.

But before we get there, let’s examine three current myths regarding the merger of native and real-time bidding.

Myth #1) Native RTB has arrived. While multiple platforms have experimented with custom solutions to merge RTB capabilities with automated native ad delivery, there is currently no standard that all publishers and platforms can utilize. FBX offers the ability to programmatically buy native ads at scale on Facebook, but this solution does not offer a standard that open Web publishers can adopt.

Standardization for Native RTB is coming very soon. The IAB is now in the final stages of completing the OpenRTB 2.3 spec, which for the first time will include support for native ads. This draft is currently going through final IAB comment and approval process. Over the next three months, you can expect to see a feverish level of activity between native technology players to push through integrations with DSPs to truly bring Native RTB to the industry at scale.

It has been a year and a half since Justin Smith became the global CEO of the Bloomberg Media Group with the mandate of making the Bloomberg LP media arm a household name with business executives around the world. Since then, Bloomberg Media has made a slew of new hires across sales, marketing and editorial. The unit has introduced Bloomberg Politics, with other verticals to follow, and relaunched its flagship site, Bloomberg.com.

In an interview, Smith talked about how publishers can compete with Facebook, why print still has a place at Bloomberg, and what he admires about Snapchat.

Bloomberg Media just launched a new ad campaign. What’s the message you’re hoping to get out?
The thing that we’ve been doing, and the reason I came to Bloomberg, is that I believe we’re one of the few companies — large, established, global media companies — that’s truly trying to marry the best of traditional with the most cutting-edge approaches and formats that are emerging from startup media. There’s a global road show, and we’re getting positive feedback. So while the brand has been well-known, I think the exciting part of these conversations is some of the new products. We’re already seeing double-digit traffic growth on the unique front as well as on the page view front.

Which startups do you look to for inspiration?
It’s hard not to admire what all the technology platforms have achieved, from Google to Facebook to LinkedIn and Snapchat now. They are at-scale, large organizations; they have figured out modern media in a better way than traditional media has. To look at how those technology platforms have created mobile content interfaces that have become market-leading, or advertising solutions they have developed that are market-leading or beating because of their measurability — they have to be the first stop in any media watcher’s process.

Publishers are approaching them with some wariness, though. Where do you stand?

I think it’s interesting that traditional publishers always complain about the platforms taking away eyeballs and not sharing. This frenemy type of dynamic: Facebook being the latest focus. The reason for their complaint is quite simple: These platforms have done a better job at media than media themselves. They’ve created better media content mousetraps. They are to a large extent wiping the table on digital advertising solutions that are measurable and data-driven.

Changes starting to take place behind the scenes in mobile networks may eventually pay dividends to anyone with a smartphone, a connected refrigerator or an IT department.

Carriers have done things pretty much the same way for years, with cellular base stations at the edge of their networks feeding into a series of specialized appliances at central facilities. Now they’re virtualizing those networks in several ways, seeking the same rewards that enterprises have reaped by virtualizing data centers: efficiency and flexibility. The trend will be in full swing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.

It’s good news for mobile users that they may not hear much about. A more efficient network leaves more free capacity for the video or application you want to run, and a more flexible carrier could quickly launch services in the future that you don’t even know you’ll need yet. The new architectures may even change how some businesses pay for mobile services.

Just as enterprises used to buy separate servers for each application, carriers often use dedicated hardware for each function involved in delivering a service, such as billing and authentication. Years of mergers have left multiple legacy platforms, adding to the mess. As a result, rolling out a new service for a customer, such as a VPN, can take weeks.

The new approach that’s gaining ground, called NFV (network functions virtualization), turns each piece of the puzzle into software that can run on standard computing hardware.

Exactly 20 years ago, I was part of the team that sold the very first banner ads on the World Wide Web. On Oct. 27, 1994, Wired magazine flipped the switch that lit up HotWired, the “cyberstation” that ushered brands like IBM, Volvo, MCI, Club Med and—famously—AT&T into the digital age. From the humble origin of a dozen brands paying $15,000 per month for static banner placement with zero analytics, Web advertising is now closing in on $50 billion in annual spending. At precisely the same moment, the banner ad (and related forms like the 15-second video pre-roll and the mobile display ad) has become a social touchstone that evokes a firestorm of condescension and condemnation at every turn. But can the digital ad business really have been built and sustained through such a flawed delivery vehicle? Digital advertising was born to an Internet that people read and watched. And advertising—well, that was a practice to be grafted onto the Web from other forms of publishing and broadcasting as technology and bandwidth allowed. Those first crude banners eventually gave way to larger, more picturesque ‘magazine’ ads and then to TV-style video spots. The business grew even as it continued to miss the larger point. Over these two decades, the Web has become something everyone does—not something they watch or read. We look for answers, we pass jokes back and forth to one another, we buy stuff, and we settle arguments. Always on, always in our hands, the Internet has become an extension of us as people. But advertising, mostly, has not kept up. And does content no longer matter? Or does it matter more than ever? The maddeningly simple answer is that it matters when it matters; when it’s closely aligned with the experience the consumer is living at that moment in time. And not for its own sake.

As such, you would have to think the company’s financial stakeholders were displeased to read that, according to one major ad buyer, only 15 percent of clients who syndicated sponsored content on BuzzFeed in 2013 returned for 2014.

From the sound of things, brands have been hesitant to return to BuzzFeed because they have not yet been able to directly link sponsored stories to product sales—a line of thinking that fundamentally misunderstands the role content marketing plays in a company’s long-term success.

As DigitasLBi’s chief investment officer, Adam Shlachter, put it to The Wall Street Journal, “Social lift and buzz is great, but I have to know if that means I will sell more toothpaste.”

It’s difficult to avoid adverts or news stories about the amazing technological feats the modern ‘intelligent car’ can perform. One of the most impressive is that a vehicle can now ‘know’ its position on the road, sense when it may be veering into another lane and transmit a warning vibration through the seat to jolt a drowsy driver into attention.

This type of technological innovation that makes our lives safer and easier to navigate is set to extend to the workplace. Already, there are smart chairs that measure our posture and how long we’ve been sitting, as well as smart work surfaces that know when we’re present.

In a recent interview with the Economist Intelligence Unit on ‘The Future of Work’, (sponsored byRicoh Europe), Alan Hedge, Director of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory at Cornell University, points out that this type of technology is just the start, “we are at the very beginning of a revolution in ‘active’ objects and products that have sensors built into them.”

Professor Hedge terms this interaction between people and design technology ‘everywhere ergonomics’. While smart chairs and surfaces may not have made their way to all workplaces just yet, many people will already be using everywhere ergonomics at home. It’s only a matter of time before the boom in wearable devices begins to have a transformative effect on the workplace. Think back to how the widespread adoption of smartphones kick-started the shift to mobile working promised by portable computers years earlier. I believe this boom could be bigger.

The history of digital technology is full of innovations that are praised for having changed the world: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, the Netscape Navigator browser, the iPod and countless others. Then there are the many products that changed the world and were suddenly overtaken by some newer, supposedly better thing: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, Netscape Navigator, the iPod and countless others.

What’s rarer in tech is the product that causes major changes, hits turbulence and then, after some nimble adjustment, finds a surprising new audience.

This week is the 25th birthday of one such aging chameleon, Adobe Photoshop, an image-editing program that was created when we snapped pictures on film and displayed them on paper. It has not just survived but thrived through every major technological transition in its lifetime: the rise of the web, the decline of print publishing, the rise and fall of home printing and the supernova of digital photography.

Photoshop attained the rare status of a product that became a verb — like Google and Xerox. Along the way, it became a lightning rod for controversy because of, among other things, the way it can be used to turn women’s bodies into unnatural magazine-cover icons, or its use by propagandists and your casually mendacious social-networking buddies who doctor their vacation snaps.

With newsstand and ad page sales ever on the decline, magazine companies looking to monetize the influence of their brands are test driving tiered-subscription models that offer the most loyal readers increased access to the editors who create the glossies they read and the celebrities who appear in them.

At Time Inc., People magazine launched its premium subscription plan in Sept. 2013, with two levels above its print or digital-only subscription deals: customers who sign up for the “all-access” tier get access to the print and digital editions of the magazine, smartphone apps and People Premium, a subscriber-only section of the website offering exclusive features and giveaways; those who buy into the “VIP” program for $205 a year receive all of “all-access” benefits, as well as three gift boxes furnished with products selected by People editors, a gift subscription and invitations to attend celebrity-studded events like the People Magazine Awards and the Essence Festival.

This Sunday, 200 VIP subscribers who entered and won a sweepstakes will participate inPeople‘s “Oscar Fan Experience,” enjoying bleacher seats right next to the red carpet, an exclusive party at which to view the telecast, and other perks, such as makeovers.

“We have a way for every consumer out there interested in celebrity entertainment to interact with People, which is really the end goal,” said Jessica Malloy, the magazine’s director of consumer marketing and revenue.

The keynote panel at the Digital Entertainment World conference in LA on Tuesday gave a great view of the divergent interests of 20th and 21st century media. Mobile video was very much on the mind of web natives, while mainstream media still seems more interested in extending the reach of its traditional television fare.

Jim Underwood, Head of Entertainment, Global Vertical Strategy at Facebook, threw down the data gauntlet stating that 75% (or 11 hours) of our waking hours are now consumed with the consumption of media. It could be argued that Facebook is a prime mover in this extraordinary statistic. The company has rocketed to the number 2 spot in the delivery of online video, second only to YouTube. In particular, the company has tripled the amount of video it delivers in just 6 months. This is largely on the back of the introduction of autoplay for videos. Mr. Underwood said that, though videos do not play when they are out of the field of view, the mere act of automatically starting the video results in many more people sticking around to watch.

Not to be outdone, Ezra Cooperstein, President and COO of Fullscreen, said that over the last 4 years the amount of mobile video starts the company sees has grown from 20% to 60%. He added some color to this, saying that girls between 13 and 17 years don’t’ even think about a television anymore. Their phone is their TV. Even though much of Fullscreen content is consumed on a phone doesn’t mean it’s cheap to produce. He said that content businesses are capital intensive. To emphasize the point he said a good deal of the cash Fullscreen received when the Chenin Group and AT&T bought the company is going straight into creating great content.

Apocryphal though he may have been, Moses was pretty cool. I really like that whole Red Sea parting thing, Exodus in general, frogs and he’s gotten great holy book PR coverage from Jews, Christians, Mormons and Baha’i alike. That alone speaks volumes to his general awesomeness.

Even the Muslims dig Moses as a prophet, messenger and leader. He was really an amazing guy.

Here’s something most people don’t know: After chatting with the legendary fiery-yet-loquacious ficus tree on Mount Sinai, Moses was given 15, not 10 commandments written on 3 tablets.

Have you ever carried a big blue sapphire tablet – or three? They’re heavy. Moses only had two hands. So he carried down the 10 most important rules with a plan to retrieve the other 5 then generally comment on the lot.

It didn’t quite work out that way as he got super busy with other stuff like destroying gold baby cows and the mass production of uber-sandals that would allow his people to wander the desert for 40 years without them needing to be replaced.

These 5 forgotten commandments were a bit more practical and not as morally high-handed as the more well-known 10; YHWH is a pragmatist and these were meant more in the vein of “Oh, and by the way..”

Luckily being the world famous biblical scholar that I am, I have access to these lost edicts. I give to you the 11th Commandment handed down to The Law Giver himself. It is pithy and essentially intended for the merchant class: Know thy account.

One of the many studies my firm runs is focused on sales effectiveness. We survey over a 1000 IT buyers in companies of 500 or more employees. Our goal is to determine not just who bought what from whom, but also why, or more importantly, why someone did NOT buy from a specific vendor.

This won’t come as much of a shock but we routinely see that:

Share takers (vendors who displace incumbent solutions) are overwhelmingly viewed as having been extremely prepared versus their competitors when entering into competitive bids.

There is an even greater direct win/loss correlation for those firms in the countries where general sales preparedness is highest (China & Germany ranked highest, France and Italy lowest of countries we surveyed).

Prepared reps are also seen as having a deeper understanding of industry specific issues and being capable of solving a buyer’s problems; consequently they also had more frequent access to senior decision makers and executive team members.

Vendors that scored lower in sales effectiveness were deemed, by buyers, deficient in three main areas:

Seller does not know my company

Seller does not understand challenges in my industry

Seller does not understand my role within the organization

In short the “losers” generally broke the 11th commandment.

Guess what? It’s only getting more complicated and competitive. As the tech landscape shifts from the 2nd to the 3rd platform, the impact of enterprise technology begins to affect many other business units outside the CIO’s office.

Data points from some of our other tech-buyer studies indicate that:

The average buying team is 7.4 people with 40% being from a business function (e.g marketing) and 41% from IT, with executives and procurement rounding out the team.

The average IT buyer self-educates like never before consuming 5 pieces of marketing content before stating they are “ready” to speak with a vendor.

Personas are impacted by emotional triggers both in the materials they consume as well as the sales process itself. Factors include rewards, risk and control. Not WIIFM, but rather how does this impact me?

Role based materials (marketing and sales) had less of an impact on people than those that focused on solutions that help address emotional controls. Emotive content is viewed by buyers as more relevant versus functionally driven demographic (role) oriented content.

Only 54% of firms we survey had a formal mechanism in place to ensure sales & marketing materials addressed relative pain points of their customers.

I have never been to Mt Sinai nor have I chatted with a burning shrub of any sort. The most I ever wandered was for an hour and a half when I was 8 and got lost in the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth. That’s more of a cultural desert. So I won’t claim to be a prophet.

But I will give you this useful little graphic many simply call The JSGGfISaMP or, more long-windedly, The Jason’s-Simple-Generic-Guide-for-Improving-Sales-and-Marketing-Preparedness:

This is not all inclusive, just illustrative. I want to point out that preparedness starts with marketing and the smart use of content to start clients down the “right path”.